- June 10, 2014
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Microsoft Xbox One Integrated Marketing: When Admitting You Were Wrong Can Be a Viable Strategy
In May of last year, Microsoft’s Xbox division announced the Xbox One, the company’s latest video game console, to the world. By late June, the company radically changed many of the console’s original policies and plans in light of industry and consumer largely negative reactions.
Amidst the countless complaints, petitions and overall negative Internet chatter, the company did something unheard of in the age of corporate policies and business mandates. They admitted they had made a mistake and sought forgiveness by adjusting their plans ahead of the consoles launch in October.
It was a huge gamble, but the company’s efforts engaged its already passionate community of fans to champion the console against its competition. The fans through Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels quickly became vanguards long after the launch.
The backstory: When Microsoft announced their next generation console, the successor to the company’s popular Xbox 360, it was met with heavy criticism from fans. Among the initial missteps Microsoft made with the Xbox One include the lack of a physical drive, the console’s “always on” connectivity requirements, draconian digital right management (DRM) and a focus on live TV simply didn’t resonate as the company had hoped.
Adding insult to injury, Microsoft’s competitor, Sony, used the furor over the Xbox One policies to strengthen their next generation device, the Playstation 4. From tweets and Facebook posts, Sony effectively accommodated disgruntled fans who felt betrayed by Microsoft’s decisions.
Following the outrage, Xbox quickly sought to make amends by admitting its mistakes and seeking to make the appropriate changes. The physical drive was reinstated, the “always-on” feature was eliminated, the DRM policies amended, and the focus was returned to games and gamers.
Throughout the entire affair, the company maintained active communications through its Xbox Twitter and Facebook handle. The community of fans quickly took the changes to heart and returned to championing the console. Xbox fans interacted with the Xbox brand’s posts significantly more than PlayStation fans did, according to social media metric firm Social Bakers’ recent study.
Phil Spencer, the new Head of Xbox, admitted the company made some missteps.
“There are two sides to the ledger,” he said in an interview with IGN.com. “There is a lot of learning that I did as a leader in the organization, when I just heard how our message resonated with people and some of the decisions that we made, that I think were actually the wrong decisions, and we had to revisit those decisions.”
He reiterated that Microsoft’s key for the Xbox One, despite a heavy focus on entertainment, is the “core gamers.” “They’re the people that have built Xbox and Xbox Live,” he told IGN.com “That’s the place where we need to do a better job showing up, and we need to engage more.”
This type of 180 — a full confession of failings followed by a mea culpa — is extremely unusual for any company, large or small. Billions of dollars were at stake and the future of Microsoft’s place in the console landscape: If it worked, Xbox gained its loyal customers back. If it didn’t then the subsequent rebranding will leave remaining customers even more confused than ever, and drive early adopters to Sony or Nintendo.
To its credit, Xbox has managed to ship five million Xbox One machines to date.
Apologizing works because consumers actually root for their favorite brands. Right now, Xbox loyalists are quietly cheering their victory over the company’s wrongheaded management. They want this U-turn to work.
The lesson: Companies don’t own brands, consumers do. Take the core of their brands away, and they’ll abandon you. Apologize, and they’ll come right back.
To learn more about brand monitoring, read “Social Listening for Small Business: Come in from the Cold, Comrade.” You also can learn what to do with negative feedback, as Xbox received, by following the advice in, “What to Do With a Bad Online Review.”
